Trump considering plan to send Afghan refugees who helped US to Congo, NYT reports

US President Donald Trump is considering the possibility of sending over 1,000 Afghans to the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) due to their assistance to the US military during the war in Afghanistan, The New York Times reported on Tuesday.

Citing an aid worker, the NYT said that the group has been stuck in Qatar for over a year, awaiting an update on their situation after having been evacuated there from Afghanistan.

According to the report, those being considered for the transfer include the families of US soldiers, as well as former Afghan Special Operations members and interpreters for the US military.

The NYT cited human rights activists as having claimed that the DRC, which currently houses over 600,000 refugees, cannot absorb an additional transfer due to the current conflict with its neighboring country of Rwanda.

President of the aid group AfghanEvac, Shawn VanDiver, criticized the move, describing it as giving the refugees a choice between “the world’s number one refugee crisis to the world’s number two refugee crisis.”

“We think this is just them wanting to send these people back to Afghanistan, where they know they will face certain death,” said VanDiver, noting that he had been briefed on the plan by the US State Department.

According to a report by The Guardian on Wednesday, the DRC plan comes after Trump canceled a plan to transfer the Afghans in question to the United States. 

The Guardian cited VanDiver as saying that 900 of the over 1,000 Afghans currently in Qatar are already eligible to enter the US, and that the remainder could still be transferred to a location more suitable than the DRC.

“This is an easy solve: ‘Hey, welcome to America,’” said VanDiver. “It’s insane, this could all be fixed just by a policy change.”

The Guardian reached out to the US State Department for comment, and it replied that it is in direct communication with the Afghans regarding their resettlement but cannot reveal details of the negotiations due to sensitivity, adding that the Afghans in Qatar “do not currently have a viable pathway to the United States.”